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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262868">Hades is a Noun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fudgelingzwodder/pseuds/fudgelingzwodder'>fudgelingzwodder</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hadestown - Mitchell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Depersonalization, Dissociation, Expanding on the universe established in the musical a bit, F/M, Hades Character Study, I forgot to add tags to this when I first posted it because I was exhausted oops, If you struggle with either of those things tread lightly in the third chapter, Introspection</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:33:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fudgelingzwodder/pseuds/fudgelingzwodder</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Noun: A person, place, or thing.</p><p>Hades is a noun. Hades is all three.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Person</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(Quick note on Hades's names: Aidoneus is the name of a mythical king said to be married to Persephone. Agelastus is a mocking name given to Hades for his temperament. It comes from the root word "agelast", meaning "a person who never laughs.")</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Hades is a person.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course Hades is a person. He’s more than just a person; he’s a King, he’s a God. He’s a man of many names. King of Diamonds, or King of Spades, depending on the day. Lord Hades. King of the Underworld. Aidoneus, if one was feeling particularly nostalgic. Agelastus, if one was feeling particularly unkind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>People get lonely. Hades must be a person because he’s damned lonely. He’s been abandoned by the only family he’s ever known and it stings more than he expected. He throws himself into work, even though there isn’t much to work on yet. When he heads up top he makes sure that he has something to show off. The instinct to prove himself may be a foolish one, but as long as it’s there he’ll indulge it. It’s on one of his business trips that he meets her, a beautiful lady who looks as alone as he feels. She calls him by his name, not his title, knowing as well as he does that names carry significance. She’s chosen her own, Persephone, and it’s as beautiful as she is. He tells her so, eventually, and her laughter makes him feel warm. The Lord of the Underground is starved for sunlight, and the Lady that has no title yet is blinding. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Underworld greets them when they return, the King and now the Queen he’s brought with him. His wife chips away at his titles and names to unearth the simple man that lies beneath. She helps him pick through the rubble, finding pieces of himself he didn’t realize he’d lost. In return, he builds her up until she becomes more than just Demeter’s daughter, more than an unnamed maiden. He’s going to make sure the world sees her as she is, that they give her the respect she deserves. She is Persephone, Queen of the Dead, yet she makes Hades feel alive in a way that he never has by himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t last. Of course it doesn’t. The Olympians pitch a fit, unable to comprehend that the King and Queen are happy in that wretched Underworld. Persephone’s mother, because Hades will not give that woman the dignity of a name, gives them an ultimatum. The King of Spades is not a sympathetic man, but even he has to admit that the destruction of the world up top is too high a price to pay for his Queen to stay below all year. He strikes a deal, with his wife's approval, and escorts her up top personally. The Olympians are waiting, Persephone’s mother front and center. The Queen of the Underworld throws herself into her King’s arms just before the border between worlds. They both know damn well the Olympians won’t cross. He holds her as tight as he dares, smoothing her hair, and thinks that he knows how Atlas feels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his wife’s absence, the man called Hades retreats, and into his place steps the King. The King starts to build. He starts with a factory, something that he can show off come winter when his Queen returns. The instinct to impress is back in full swing. A part of him comments that he doesn’t need to impress her, but it’s smothered by the sound of the machinery coming to life. He likes the rhythms of the train going back and forth, the order of the souls filing in. He takes a more active role as King, drawing up contracts and expanding the town. When his Queen returns, she stares and stares, and Lord Hades smiles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The God of the Dead knows the importance of names. They separate people from things, give them an identity to cling to. There’s a reason that he takes names once the contracts are signed. The mortals seem to have forgotten the importance of a name over the years, but some folks remember. The oldest shades refused to give him their names when he asked. The King of Diamonds will shuffle the cards in his favor, sure, but he won’t outright cheat. He only takes what they’re willing to give. If they won’t sell their names, then he won’t buy them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The King builds his walls higher, he builds his city larger, he builds up his Underworld to prove a point. No one speaks his name without a title anymore. Not the Fates that mock him, not Hermes who runs his trains, not even his wife. She still makes him feel alive, but not in the soft way she had when they were first married. Now he feels like a live wire, ready to short out at the slightest touch. It seems that all they can do when they’re together is fight. Part of him mourns the loss, but the rest of him starts building armor, stacking the layers of stones that his Queen had once torn away. She watches him build his walls back up, and she turns away.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hi y'all! This is a bit of a different style than what I usually write in, I'm not super confident but I'm having fun with it. I was originally going to post this as a single work but it was getting long and I was losing steam, so I figured that going chapter by chapter would be better.<br/>The style for this was partially inspired by JeanLuciferGohard here on AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard), they're not writing anything for Hadestown currently but I'd highly recommend checking out what they've done! Their works reminded me that you can stylize writing, lol.<br/>Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Place</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Hades is a place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows this. He’s always known this. Long before the factories went up, long before he was even married, he had been thrown down below. There was nothing then, no Hadestown, nothing but the ever-flowing Styx. He had laid in the dirt and breathed, and to his surprise the rocks breathed with him. The pulse of the Underworld thrummed gently in time with his own, and Lord Hades smiled. It wasn’t by his choice that he was here, but the kingdom had welcomed him with open arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he first brings Persephone down below, he doesn’t know what to expect. Doesn’t know, exactly, but he has hopes. By the time that she steps underground for the first time, he’s made a home for himself, but it still isn’t much. He holds his breath, and the Underworld holds it with him. She looks around, something flickering behind her eyes before she smiles and throws her arms around him. The stones let out a soft sigh of relief, rumbling beneath their feet to welcome their Queen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first factory goes up, first only surrounded by some ramshackle buildings, but it slowly blossoms into a thriving town. Hadestown, they call it. Persephone snorts when she hears it, rolling her eyes. Says that he must be more vain than she thought if she named his own damn kingdom after himself. It was early enough in their marriage that her words didn't have much bite to them, but they still rubbed him the wrong way. He shrugs it off, tells her that’s just what the folks have started calling it, and he can’t control that. He doesn’t tell her the truth that lies in the name, not until much later, and by that point they’re too far apart for her to understand. At the time, it doesn’t seem like it matters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The city is a beautiful thing. His wife doesn’t agree, he knows that for a fact, but he doesn’t understand why. How can she not see it? He can feel the electricity pulsing through his veins, the crackling of the wires above echoing along the cavernous walls. A cacophony of metal and static that he could feel with his eyes closed. He tells her that he’s the conductor of this damned city, but he knows that she doesn’t truly understand what he means. The energy of the Underworld flows through him as easy as drawing breath. He can direct it, sure, but he didn’t create it. He’s just tapping into what’s already there, slowly shaping what already exists into a different form. Somehow it’s something that folks don’t question about his fellow Gods. Of course his wife is tied to the nature up above, why wouldn’t she be? Of course his brother is a part of the sea, and the sea is a part of him in turn. It’s obvious. But no one thinks that way of Hades and his domain. He doesn’t bother to correct his family when they scoff about his lifeless Underworld. He knows better than anyone how full of life it really is. It’s just not the life that the Olympians expect.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hadestown grows, the Lady of the Underground snaps, like a weed. The town flourishes, expanding in all directions. The power grid grows with it, a system of wires and cables and sparkling light running like veins above their heads. It’s a selfish thing, but it makes Hades feel closer to his wife. He pushes as far up as he can, stretching the limits of his influence, until the gap between the Underworld and the one above is as narrow as he can get it. Some summers he reaches up into the grid and can feel the world above humming with a different kind of life. He doesn’t have the same claim to Persephone’s domain that she has to the Underworld, he can’t touch what is rightfully hers, but it makes him feel close to her all the same. He wonders if she ever notices. Probably not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The King holds out the city to his wife, holding out a piece of himself with it. It was all for her, if she only wanted it. She could tap into the grid anytime she wanted to. All that was his was half hers, after all. Hell, when she was here with him she could take it all and he wouldn’t say a word. She doesn’t, though. The love of his life looks at what he’s offering and throws it away, spitting on it as she turns on her heel. A generator in one of the factories explodes in a shower of sparks as it overloads, sending a chunk of the grid into darkness. The workers think it’s a freak accident. Persephone thinks it’s a testament that Hadestown is doomed to fail. Hades doesn’t correct either of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everybody knows that walls have ears. Everybody knows, yet no one thinks about whose ears they are. Hades is the town, and the town is him, so of course he hears what’s happening. He knows about his wife’s little secret, but he willingly turns a blind eye to the crack in the wall. He’ll monitor the situation, but if there’s anything in the Underworld that it’s Queen doesn’t actively hate, well, he’s not going to mess with it. This also means he knows the second that poet steps foot past the wall. He doesn’t intervene immediately, though. Hades the town is curious about this poor boy, who walked the lonely road through the Underworld that the King and Queen had walked before the train, who sang to the stones until they parted. The boy stirs something in the kingdom that makes the King uncomfortable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The poet sings for him, and no one realizes that this isn’t the first time that his song has touched Hades. Even his wife pleads with him to listen, and how can he tell her that he already has? He hears what the young man says to the stones and the walls and the workers as if he’s being spoken to directly. Still, he sees the look on his wife’s face as the poet sings. He feels the town trembling beneath them, and he is the trembling ground. He is listening to the walls and he is the walls singing in return. He looks at Persephone, and her eyes are shining. The Underworld is holding its breath, and the King is holding his breath, and the Queen looks at them both and holds out her hands. The King takes them, and Hades the man and Hades the town both sigh in relief.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hey y'all! I was on a roll with this, but no promises that the third chapter will come as quickly as this one did. Having a bit of a rough patch at the moment, but writing is helping, which is good. Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Thing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: Descriptions of depersonalization/dissociative behaviors. I'm drawing from my own experiences, because I really struggle with it, so if it's something that you have issues with tread lightly. Going to add this to the tags as well!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Hades is a thing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did not always know this, but he does now. He’s probably been a thing forever. A scapegoat, something to point at when things go wrong. That damned Hades. It makes it easier for the rest of the Olympians to cast him down without a second glance. He’s never really been one of them, and it’s glaringly obvious once there’s no enemy uniting them. There’s nothing else for them to focus on but each other. Hades is almost glad to be free of it when he’s cast out. Almost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The King of the Underworld starts off as the King of Not Much, Really. There’s nothing when he arrives, but he takes the time to build it. Stone by stone, he uses what he’s been given and makes it a home. There are days, weeks, months that he doesn’t see another soul. He feels like a tool. Made for a purpose, completing a task. The lines between himself and the hammer he holds blur together until they’re one and the same, and he likes it. It simplifies things, in a way, and when he’s down here by himself it doesn’t matter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When his wife leaves for the first time, the King of the Underworld sits down in his empty house and stares at the wall. He doesn’t realize how long he’s been sitting until the Dog of the Underworld finds him and lays down on his feet. Spring passes, summer rolls around, and it all seems to be moving agonizingly slowly. He shouldn’t be bothered by being alone, he who has been underground since the world began, but he is. So he falls back to his old ways. He becomes a tool, shaping the Underworld and crafting a home. Not just for himself now, not just for the man that he is sometimes, but for his wife. For his Queen, he’ll do most anything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The town is almost an accident, but some summers are better than others. The summer that the factories go up is a particularly bad one. Hades numbs himself when Persephone is gone, picks up his tools and goes to work until they’re molded to the shape of his hands. He builds and builds, and he must have some sort of plan because everything is functional but he isn’t thinking too hard about it. The repetitive motions and steady rhythms help him lose himself. A steady beat thrums through the man and the ground beneath him and the pickaxe he uses to strike it. He will build something worthy of the power in this realm, worthy of the Queen that sits on the throne half of the year—no, don’t think about her now, don’t start. Swing the axe. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The summer the factories go up is bad, and they only get worse. The Lady of Ways and Means spits venom over her shoulder as she storms off to the train, and the Lord of the Mines stares after her. He can’t chase after her. He can’t say anything at all. So he doesn’t. He goes back upstairs to his big empty office and doesn’t leave it for a week. Truth be told, he spends most of that week flat on the leather couch tucked into the corner. He’s no stranger to sleeping on the couch, but this time he isn’t here because someone else doesn’t want him in their bed. After three days, the office door swings open, and Hermes strides in. The sometimes-a-man is still on the couch, staring straight up at the ceiling and thinking of nothing. If he thinks, he will break, and he can’t break, so he won’t think. Hermes kneels down beside the couch to look at him properly, grumbling about his knees. The God of the Dead doesn’t react, and the Psychopomp sighs. He presses a toolkit into the hand of the Hades-shaped thing on the couch, and points him towards a broken generator. By the time that Lord Hades is a person again, Hermes is gone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It goes on like that for some time. The Goddess of Springtime spends her summers throwing herself into revelry, and the God of the Underworld spends his throwing himself into work. Sometimes he’s desperate, frantically trying to fix what’s broken, because something must be broken if his wife hates it and surely he can fix it. Most of the time, though, he just works. He loses himself to the flow of the time slipping past, and it’s so easy. Build the wall. Maintain the factories. Keep up with the books, which are taking up more and more of his time. Simple, really. Anyone could do it. In those moments he doesn’t have to be Hades. He’s just a means to an end. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The King of Spades usually tries his damndest to be a person in the wintertime. Lately, though, he hasn’t tried all that hard. Part of him hopes that Persephone will notice and ask him about it, and that they can have an honest conversation without a fight, but she doesn’t. Even if she does notice, she doesn’t bring it up. So he stops. He shuts himself in his office, walling himself off, and stays busy so that he doesn’t have to think about his situation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The fragile balance he manages to cling to shatters when that damned poet shows up. All of Hades, the man and the place and the thing, is forced to confront what he’d shoved down for so long. It feels like his chest is burning. He wants to run back into his office and slam the door so that he can crumble in peace. The part of him that’s just the means to an end wants him to stop existing for a while, because existing as the King hurts. When he turns to leave, though, he sees his wife’s face and he falters. She’s looking at him, really looking at him for the first time in a long time. He stares back at her, and part of him still wants to run and hide, but he doesn’t. He takes her hands and lets himself hope.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I might add another chapter as an epilogue, but I'm not sure, so for now I'm calling this done! This one was a little tougher to write because of the CW mentioned at the beginning, and also because I have chronic pain in my arms and hands that makes doing things a bitch sometimes. As always, thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The summer after the poet leaves stretches on, and Hades is left to pick up the pieces. He is a man and a place and a thing all rolled into one, and he’s trying his damndest to reconcile that. It’s harder than he expects it to be. After all, he’s been compartmentalizing to get through the summers for longer than most mortals are alive. Surprising everyone involved, it’s the little songbird that keeps him grounded. The girl storms up to his office one day, plants herself in the seat across from his desk, and hands him a list of demands from the workers. She doesn’t leave. Eurydice carves out a place for herself in the Underworld, fierce in a way that makes Hades’s chest ache for reasons he can’t quite name. He can’t tell if the girl reminds him of himself or his wife. Regardless, she proves herself useful, keeping the King of the Mines present and on track when he can’t do it himself. He asks her, once, why she bothers helping a sour old man, especially one who arguably ruined her life. Eurydice tilts her head at him, hands on her hips, and tells him bluntly that it ain’t just for him. She gestures at the whole of Hadestown to illustrate her point, and he nods in understanding. At least she’s honest. Hades always hated liars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The grid hums louder than usual the day that the Queen returns. The workers are nervous because the town is nervous, the town is nervous because the King is nervous, and the King is nervous because he’s doubtful. The Queen is nervous, too, which doesn’t make the King or the town any happier. An old song doesn’t mend centuries of hurt in one fell swoop. The Lord of the Dead and the Lady of Springtime have to relearn how to exist together, and that takes time. Fortunately, time is something they have in spades. Unfortunately, they only have it in six month chunks. The grid sputters that first winter, but it manages to chug along, and so do they.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The summers develop a steadier rhythm. Before the poet, every time the Queen was back Up Top was a gamble. Some summers the King never emerged from his office, some he threw himself into work in a feverish pitch, some were only a couple months long before the Lady was back, stomping around in a way that made the ground tremble. Now, though, there’s a rhyme and reason to the cycles. The first three months are focused on the hardest work. Infrastructure changes, renovations, the most time consuming things. That way, even if they run longer than scheduled, they can still be done by the time autumn rolls around. Summertimes are spent doing much-needed maintenance to what’s already in place. Before the poet, Hades (both the town and the man) buried everything broken under shiny new construction. Now, though, Hades (both the town and the man) makes an effort to polish the rust off instead of just building around it. The town stops expanding, but it blooms in a different way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It isn’t easy, but nothing important ever is. There are still times, even during the winter, when the King retreats to an old factory and spends a day or two methodically fixing what’s broken until it can all function again. The workers know to give the Boss space when the grid falters and he works the line beside them. The Lady doesn’t, not at first, and it’s the songbird who reminds her of her own days at the bar. The Queen is quiet for a while after that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Lady of the Underground asks her husband to show her how the grid works. The Lord of the Underworld stares at her, and the lights flicker when he blinks, but eventually he nods. They go outside and sit down together in the dirt. He holds out the town in the palm of his hand, and this time she takes it. All that’s his is half hers, after all. Persephone makes an effort to understand what that means, and Hades makes an effort to explain. The lights shine brighter that day.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this is short, but I wanted to add a little something to the end of this! I'm trying to write more consistently, and I may do a similar character study style piece with Persephone next. Song for this chapter is Fingers to the Bone by Brown Bird, I know it doesn't fit this exactly but it's a general Hadestown song for me.</p><p>I feel really awkward since I don't really know the etiquette for this sort of thing so I'll just say it straight out: I made a ko-fi as a tip jar here https://ko-fi.com/b0358 . Because of the pandemic I've been out of work since March, and while I have savings and I'm not in dire straits it's still not great. If y'all enjoy what I do, feel free to drop me something. Absolutely no obligation though! I know times are hard for everyone.</p><p>Thanks for reading! I appreciate y'all &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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